


Fixed Point

by Carbonpixel



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: After the Kaiju Brain Drift, Ambiguous friendship/romance, Gen, Humanity from the kaiju's perspective, M/M, Newt is still pretending to hate Gottlieb, Newt loses touch with reality, codependent scientists, hive mind experiences, secret best friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-15
Updated: 2014-08-15
Packaged: 2018-02-13 07:33:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2142528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carbonpixel/pseuds/Carbonpixel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sensations from the kaiju's hive mind occasionally engulf Newt. His subconscious brings him out of the haze with images of his colleague.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fixed Point

It would happen frequently, in quiet moments, when his eyes would close from exhaustion and his thoughts would taper from fatigue. The world he knew would fall away, its beakers and flasks and preserved specimens relegated to a dimension apart from his awareness. Gradually, aspects of himself would fade just as his surroundings had, until he could not recognize the boundary that had once existed between himself and an encroaching miasma of foreign and encompassing sensations.

His vantage point would shift from one set of eyes to many, and various impressions would descend on him with reptilian wings: the sight of the burgundy light of a dying sun from multiple perspectives at once, the sense of physical tension during transport to the site of deployment beyond the reach of that sun, the pride and nobility of knowing that every being sent as a soldier to that other-place was divinely engineered to serve its purpose. He would embrace these experiences as his own, because they were.

He would take special interest in visions of the vermin, tiny bipedal creatures whose shrill cries were matched only by their vexing inability to comprehend the soldiers’ advances. He would watch as, in one instance, they would scurry away from a soldier’s clawed feet, ignorant of the soldier’s fundamental perfection, and in another, pad slowly toward a soldier carrying small specks of soft light, rightly awed by the soldier’s superior design but ultimately misguided about its intentions. The ambivalence would amuse him.

Eventually a recurring character would emerge from the crowds of vermin, a specific vermin with an uneven gait and a cloth covering with a line of short fibers at the top. After a few shared visions he would recognize this creature, and acknowledge it with the same thought each time: _Ugh, I hate that guy._

This thought would carry him out of his reverie. He would recognize the "I" as himself, Newt Geiszler, a scientist, maverick, and grandstander, distinct from the communal sensations he had accessed. The reminder of his separate identity would sever the ties that had formed between his own consciousness and the consciousness of the many, and he would drift back into his own mind-space. The borders between him and the many would become clear again.

He would open his eyes and find his side of the lab as he left it, glassware and tissue samples scattered haphazardly around his workstation. He would then look to the other side of the room and see Hermann Gottlieb, consistently stoical and rigid, occasionally wearing a winter coat with a fur collar.

Gottlieb’s presence in his hive mind experiences irritated Newt, striking him as vaguely uppity. Nevertheless, Newt was grateful for the fixed point in his wavering reality.


End file.
